Overview
This topic explores the relationships between organisms and their environments, including the study of ecosystems, energy flow, population dynamics, and environmental challenges. It provides insight into how life is interconnected and how natural systems maintain balance.
Key Concepts and Ecological Principles
- Ecology: The study of interactions between organisms and their environment, including both biotic (living) and abiotic (nonliving) components.
- Levels of Organization: Individual → Population → Community → Ecosystem → Biome → Biosphere
- Food Chains and Webs: Illustrate how energy flows through an ecosystem from producers to consumers to decomposers.
- Producers: Organisms (like plants) that make their own food via photosynthesis; base of the food chain.
- Consumers: Organisms that eat other organisms. Includes herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and decomposers.
- Energy Pyramid: Shows how energy decreases at each trophic level, with only about 10% of energy passed on.
- Population Growth: Can be exponential (rapid increase) or logistic (stabilizes at carrying capacity). Influenced by birth rate, death rate, immigration, and emigration.
- Limiting Factors: Environmental conditions that restrict population growth (e.g., food, space, predators).
- Biodiversity: The variety of life in an area. Greater biodiversity leads to greater ecosystem stability.
- Human Impact: Includes pollution, deforestation, habitat loss, and climate change, which disrupt ecological balance and threaten biodiversity.
Quick Tip
Remember the 10% rule: only about 10% of energy from one trophic level is passed to the next. This limits the number of energy levels in a food chain.